Regret

There are four things whose creation G‑d regrets every day. The first is galut (exile) . . . (Talmud, Sukkah 52b)1

To say that G‑d “regrets” something is obviously at odds with our understanding of His omniscience and omnipotence. Regret implies that one now knows something that one did not know before; that one’s earlier decision or deed was flawed or ill-informed; that one has now matured to the point that he can look back and reject a deficient past. None of this, of course, can be related to G‑d. In the words of the verse, “G‑d is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of Adam that He should regret.”2

Attributing regret to G‑d represents a further problem: if G‑d regrets the creation of something, how could that thing continue to exist? As the chassidic masters explain, creation is a perpetual act on the part of G‑d. When the Torah tells us that “G‑d said: ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light,” it isn’t describing a one-time event which took place on the first day of creation; it is telling us that what we experience as “light” is the embodiment of G‑d’s continued articulation of His desire that there be light. In every fraction of every moment of time, G‑d “says” “Let there be light!” and it is this divine utterance that constitutes the essence of physical light. For no being or phenomenon can possibly exist independently of G‑d’s constant involvement in its creation.3

[The story is told of a young man who left his hometown for several years to study under the tutelage of chassidic master Rabbi DovBer of Mezeritch.4 When he returned, one of his friends asked him: “Why did you have to leave your family and community to go study in some distant town? What did you learn in Mezeritch that you couldn’t have learned in our own study halls from our own rabbis?”

“Tell me,” said the young chassid, “do you believe in G‑d?”

“Certainly I believe in G‑d.”

“If G‑d no longer wanted this table to exist, what would happen?”

“What kind of question is that? G‑d can do everything! If He no longer wanted this table to exist, He could destroy it immediately.”

“What might He do?”

“What might He do? Whatever He wants! He could send forth a fire and incinerate it on the spot.”

“But if G‑d incinerates the table, there would still remain the ashes.”

“G‑d can create such a mighty fire that nothing whatsoever would remain.”

“If such is your conception of G‑d,” said Rabbi DovBer’s new student, “you might as well throw yourself, together with this god of yours, into that fire. What is this table, if not the embodiment of G‑d’s desire that it be? The moment G‑d no longer desires its existence, it has no existence!”]

So, if G‑d regrets the creation of galut every day, why are we still in exile? How could galut exist, even as a concept, without G‑d’s continued desire that it be?

The Art of Metaphor

Then again, nothing we say about G‑d can imply quite the same thing it does when applied to a mortal being. For example, when we say that G‑d “hears” our prayers, do we mean that sound waves generated by our vocal chords vibrate a divine eardrum and stimulate a divine brain in order for G‑d to “hear” our request? Do we even mean that our prayers inform G‑d what it is we lack—G‑d who knows our every desire before we are ourselves aware of it, indeed before we were born? Obviously not. When we say that G‑d hears our prayers, we mean “hear” in a purely conceptual sense—“hear” as in “take notice of” and “pay attention to” and, hopefully, “respond to.”

In discussing G‑d, we inevitably use terms whose meaning is colored by the dynamics of our experience—an experience bounded by time, space and our human limitations. Our only other option would be not to speak of G‑d at all.5 So in using these terms, we must always take care to strip them of their mortal trappings and apply only their pure, noncorporeal essence to our understanding of G‑d’s relationship to our existence.

Thus, when the Torah tells us that G‑d regrets something, it expects us to strip the term “regret” down to its bare conceptual bones: to divest it of all connotations of failing and past ignorance—indeed, of time itself—before applying it to G‑d.

Regret, to us, means that something is both desired and not desired—desired in the past, but not desired in the present. Applied to a timeless G‑d, “regret” implies both these states simultaneously: something that is both desired and not desired, with the desire belonging to the more distant dimension of the thing (its “past”), and the non-desire belonging to its more apparent and immediate dimension (its “present”).

This is G‑d’s attitude to galut “every day”—including the very day on which He destroyed the Holy Temple and banished us from the Holy Land.

G‑d desires galut and does not desire it at the same time. He desires its positive functions—the fortitude it reveals in us, the depths of faith to which it challenges us, its globalization of our mission as His “light unto the nations.”6 But He abhors its manifest reality—the physical suffering and spiritual displacement to which it subjects us. Upon our ultimate deliverance from exile, the positive essence of galut will come to light—but then, of course, we shall no longer be in a state of galut. Galut, by definition, is a state in which the externalities of life obscure its inner content. Thus, the state of galut is a state of “regret”: a state whose non-desirable element is manifest and “present,” while its desirable aspect is “in the past”— distant and obscured.

And since a thing’s “existence” is the expression of a divine desire that it be, the state of galut exists only in a very limited sense—only inasmuch as G‑d desires it. Only its “desired” element possesses true existence; its “not desired” element, despite its ostensibly greater, more “present” reality, is a nonentity, nothing more than the illusionary shadow of its truly real, though presently obscured, positive function.

Two Lessons

Today, galut is no longer what it used to be. Although we still suffer the spiritual rootlessness of galut, its more blatant expressions are fading away: today, a Jew can live practically anywhere in the world in freedom and prosperity.

But to feel comfortable in galut is the greatest galut there can be, the ultimate symptom of alienation from one’s essence and source. To feel comfortable in galut—to perceive it as a viable, even desirable, state of affairs—is to live in contradiction to G‑d’s daily regret of galut. The Jew who lives in harmony with G‑d will always regard the galut state as abhorrent and undesirable.7

At the same time, we know that galut, devoid of all but the faintest echo of divine desire, possesses no true reality, no matter how formidable a face it may represent to us. We understand that it is ever poised on the brink of dissolution; that at any moment, its desirable essence can manifest itself and banish the galut “reality” to the regretted past that it is.8

The doctrine of “Perpetual Creation” appears in Midrash Tehillim (Psalms 119:89), but it was Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov who emphasized it in his teachings, and Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi who elaborated on it in his Tanya (part 2). Later chassidic thinkers, and the Rebbe in particular, have demonstrated its centrality to the Judaism’s understanding of G‑d and reality.

Which is not an option, since G‑d has commanded us to not only believe in His existence, but also to know and comprehend it to the extent to which we are capable (see Can We Speak Intelligibly About G‑d?).

Thus the Haggadah tells us that Jacob descended to Egypt to begin the first (and prototypical) galut of Israel “forced by the divine command.” On the face of it, this seems inconsistent with our sages’ depiction of Jacob as a merkavah (“chariot” or “vehicle”) of the divine will, whose “every limb was totally removed from physical concerns, and served only as a vehicle to carry out G‑d’s will every moment of his life” (Bereishit Rabbah 82:6; Tanya, ch. 23). Would a merkavah feel “forced” to fulfill a divine command?

In truth, however, it was because Jacob was so absolutely attuned to the divine will that he felt “forced” into his exile in Egypt. Because he experienced galut as G‑d relates to it—as a “regretted” thing, as something whose “present” is undesirable—his attitude toward galut was one of antipathy and aversion, even as he readily entered it to harvest its positive, yet hidden, potentials.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Tammuz 2 and 9, 5741 (July 4 and 11, 1981) and on other occasions (Likkutei Sichot, vol. 24, pp. 167–176, et al).

The non-reality of galut is a theme which pervades the Rebbe’s writings and talks. This was much more than an “idea” to him—in the Rebbe, one saw a person who lived and experienced the reality described in the last paragraph of this essay. Here, for example, is a freely translated transcript of his words at a farbrengen (chassidic gathering) on Shabbat Parshat Pinchas 5744 (July 14, 1984):

“. . . In regard to what has been discussed above—the Redemption and the era of Moshiach—there are those who wonder (though, for obvious reasons, they do not openly express their amazement): How can a person appear in public, week after week, and repeatedly speak of one subject—the coming of Moshiach? Furthermore, this person always stresses that he is not merely speaking of the concept, but of the actual coming of Moshiach, here on physical earth, and immediately, on this very day—Shabbat Parshat Pinchas 5744! He then instructs, on each occasion, to sing ‘May the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days,’ emphasizing that ‘speedily in our days’ should not be understood as ‘speedily, tomorrow,’ but as ‘speedily, today’!

“Certainly, every Jew believes that Moshiach can come any moment—after all, ‘I await his coming every day’ is one of the fundamental principles of the Jewish faith. Still—they wonder—to sense that Moshiach will come at this very moment is hardly consistent with the reality of our lives. So why does this man speak incessantly about this, on every occasion, and with such single-minded intensity, as if to forcefully ram the idea into the minds of his listeners?

“Their conclusion is that all this is a nice dream (and, as we say in our prayers, ‘May all my dreams be positively fulfilled for me and for all of Israel’)—nice, but not very realistic. So what’s the point of speaking, in such length and frequency, about one’s dreams?

“The truth, however, is the very opposite.

“In a maamar (discourse of chassidic teaching) based on the verse ‘When G‑d returns the exiles of Israel, we shall be as those who have dreamed’ (Psalms 126:1), Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains that our current state of galut is comparable to a dream, in which a person’s sense of perception can tolerate the most contradictory and irrational things.

“In other words, our current ‘reality’ is a dream, while the world of Moshiach is the true reality. In a single moment, we can all wake from the dream of galut and open our eyes to the true reality of our existence—the perfect world of Moshiach. It is in the power of each and every one present in this room to immediately wake himself from his dream, so that today, Shabbat Parshat Pinchas 5744, before we even have a chance to recite the minchah prayers, indeed this very moment, we all open our eyes and see Moshiach, in the flesh, with us, here in this room!”

Regret is human, born out of error and powerlessness. Being locked into three dimensional time we make mistakes. After seeing the impact of our decisions over time, we regret them. G*d doesn't have that problem. He lives outside time and is omnipotent. Nothing surprises him. He knows exactly what he's doing.

I have a problem with people humanizing G*d and speculating as to his emotional state.

We were slaves to Pharaoh and from the time of Moses' birth to Miriam's song at the sea was 80 years. G*d, who could have freed us with a thought, used an imperfect man as a agent and plagues as tools to achieve his will in a way that perhaps I wouldn't have done. My actions are not perfect. My mind cannot conceive eternity and my heart cannot perceive the desires and true needs of all mankind. I'm not G*d.

The temple was destroyed. It must have been the right thing. Only he truly knows why it was the right thing.

What about the flood
What about the flood when G-d regrets he ever made man? Was this a lesson for future generations?
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Alan S.Long IslandJuly 7, 2013

What is, isn't. What isn't is. Is this the sum total of this article? Confusing, to say the least. While I believe I understand what the article is trying to convey, I do not find fulfillment in its teaching. It sadly reminds me of the distorted reality of the mid-east crisis, when the Arab countries distort all truths 180 degrees -- and they have done so since the creation of modern Israel. That is, human's have a limited understanding of G-d's tapestry, and this might be the author's best attempt to explain it.
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B. MorozowVerdun, Qc, CanadaAugust 9, 2011

Makes so much sense!
thanks for posting this article about hashem "regretting" exile - i wondered about that a lot, you clarified it so well, thank you!
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yaelBrooklyn , NyAugust 9, 2011

Amazing and beautifully written.
May we will open our eyes and see the right things
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